G-8 Russian Poll.

Russian daily Vzglyad positions itself as a business daily. It does, indeed, attract many comments from all kinds of public ranging from uber-liberal loonies to normal people to armies of mostly Ukrainian trolls. I use Vzglyad merely as news aggregator and, once in a while, source of either decent or, opposite, down right stupid opinion pieces. In all, I don't take it too seriously. Yet, Vzglyad does provide good feel for public opinion in Russia (granted very roughly approximate) and here is one from two days ago regarding possible Russia's return to G-7, or G-8, if one wishes. 

25, 576 people were polled on-line and 92.3% of those responded negatively to the question if Russia should return to Great Eight. Here are slightly updated results--nothing changed. To interpret these results is really easy for anyone who knows Russia not from pages of NYT or WaPo, or Moscow Times, or Kommersant, but knows Russia's and Russian people. Russia doesn't want to deal with the so called West and doesn't see herself as a part of it, she sees her future in Eurasia. Modern West lost any value for overwhelming majority of Russians and this is not the heat of the moment poll--it is a well defined long term trend which has massive geopolitical ramifications. Why? How about this little piece of news: Russia and China signed new package of documents on military cooperation, which allowed Sergei Shoigu to call it (in Russian) a new stage of Russian-Chinese cooperation. This somehow coincided with Igor Korotchenko, who is one of Russia's main insiders on defense, stating three days ago at Solovyov's show, that Russia should extend her anti-missile umbrella over China (in Russian).

So, something is up and who knows what we will observe in coming months. Chinese meanwhile are moving people and hardware to Russia for Center 2019 military exercise. These are very big maneuvers and they also are designed to address some issues with inevitable exit of the United States from Afghanistan and a shitstorm which will happen there once US leaves. Somebody needs to clean up the mess, once the Taliban scourge starts pouring over the borders. I wish Zbig was still alive to see the fruits of his policies. 

    

The Hell You Say!

Finally, even steadily degenerating Vzglyad gets it. In today's article about spying, by the West, inside Russia's "elites"--I assume that to be the case, everybody spies on everybody--the author comes to the conclusion: 

Не менее актуальна сейчас и проблема чисто политического шпионажа. В Вашингтоне даже не пытаются скрывать, что практически все оценки и прогнозы в отношении России строятся на 90% из информации, полученной из конфиденциальных источников. Это университетские think-tank опираются на тенденциозные оценки политэмигрантов и представителей «внутренней эмиграции», отчего все эти доклады порой так весело выглядят.   

Translation: No less acute now is the problem of purely political espionage. Washington does not even try to hide the fact that practically all assessments and forecasts about Russia are 90% based on information from confidential sources. These university think-tanks use biased assessments by political immigrants and the representatives of the so called "internal immigration" (euphemism for Russia's liberasts, people with fair faces and so called "nationalists") , that is why those reports are often look so funny. 

No, they are not "funny" in the end, despite hilarious stupidity and ignorance of people who write those. Well, I am screaming about the danger of this BS about Russia in the West for years now. It has nothing to do with political espionage, but everything with a permanent Chalabi moment for US elites whose lack of education, culture and awareness of the outside world, especially of Russia is clear and present danger for the world for a reason that many those people in D.C. have no clue about what they are dealing with and may run, due to their ignorance, into a very sorry situation for everybody. Here is one such example--the guy is a certified ignoramus, yet, look at him:

            Russia is weak, contrary to popular belief

You may google "credentials" of this amateur easily and yes, degree in political "science", what else. This is the level of "expertise" of modern US "elites" and it is down right terrifying that modern Russia Studies field in the West is dominated with grievances and huge egos afflicted Russian (and Western) nobodies who convinced many in the US that Russia still resides in 1990s. While at it, my second book, which comes along fairly nicely, tries to finally deal with these "analysts" and other political "scientists" by providing a very real, tangible numerical tools for understanding the depth of ignorance and detachment from military and geopolitical reality by those self-proclaimed "experts". Either Washington begins to live in reality or it may end up really bad for everyone involved. Good that even such increasingly reminiscent of the sewer Vzglyad at least gets it.  

UPDATE: Lavrov is explicit about "quality" of American "elite". I know, I am writing about this for years now. 

 

Vzglyad Poll.

Today, a very famous Russian media resource Vzglyad posted the results of a poll on what kind of relations would Russians prefer with the United States. After more than 9000 people answered what emerged is rather peculiar in a sense that Russians simply want to be left alone. 

        

Russians long ago stopped viewing the United States as possible ally and after West's committing a cultural suicide in Russia with West's inspired coup in Kiev, the only thing Russians do want is for West to just go away. That is what this neutrality means.